Abolitionist Harriet Tubman's image will appear on a new series of $20 bills, becoming the first African-American to appear on U.S. paper currency and the first woman in more than a century, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday.
In replacing replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, the Treasury Department abandoned a previous plan to have a woman replace founding father Alexander Hamilton on the $10. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the about-face came in response to an unexpected show of support for Hamilton in the weeks after he announced that plan last June — a response fueled, in part, by the popularity of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical based on Hamilton's life by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
President Grover Cleveland appeared on the front of the $20 note in 1914. Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. President (1829–37), has been featured on the front side of the bill since 1928, which is why the twenty-dollar bill is often called a "Jackson." The twenty-dollar bill in the past was referred to as a "double-sawbuck" because it is twice the value of a ten-dollar bill.
To make room for Tubman on the front of the $20 bill, Jackson will be moved to the back where he'll be incorporated into the existing image of the White House. Lew said that image could depict the statue of Jackson riding horseback in Lafayette Square across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin had personally lobbied Treasury Secretary Lew to put Eleanor Roosevelt on the note. Goodwin was heartened that the process generated such passion about American history on all sides. She hopes more and more women will be added to currency "such that a century from now Americans will begin to ask, 'Where are the men?'”
Grover Cleveland got 14 years on the $20 bill. Andrew Jackson lasted for 88. Here's hoping that Harriet Tubman, the former Union spy, can have a longer run than Jackson.
Paul Murphy
Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy
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